42 MENA's Frozen Conflicts - POMEPS
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
POMEPS
STUDIES
42
MENA’s Frozen Conflicts
November 2020
Contents MENA’s Frozen Conflicts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Marc Lynch, Project on Middle East Political Science, George Washington University Syria, Crisis Ecologies, and Enduring Insecurities in the MENA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Samer Abboud, Villanova University Hybrid Security, Frozen Conflicts, and Peace in MENA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Ariel I. Ahram, Virginia Tech Yemen’s Mental Health Crisis and Its Implications for Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Raiman al-Hamdani; Yemen Policy Center, ARK Group, The European Council for Foreign Relations Patterns of Mobilization and Repression in Iraq’s Tishreen Uprising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Chantal Berman, Georgetown University; Killian Clarke, Harvard University; and Rima Majed, American University of Beirut From R2P to Reticence: U.S. Policy and the Libyan Conflict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Mieczysław P. Boduszyński, Pomona College Wars, Capital and the MENA region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Matteo Capasso, European University Institute, Italy The consolidation of a (post-jihadi) technocratic state-let in Idlib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Jerome Drevon, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies; and Patrick Haenni, European University Institute Heartbreak, Still Time, and Pressing Forward: On Lebanon and the Future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Sami Hermez, Northwestern University in Qatar Failure to Launch: The Inability of Catalysts to Alter Political Arrangements in Lebanon and Syria . . . . . 52 Sara Kayyali, Human Rights Watch The Great Thaw: The Resumption of Political Development in the Middle East. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 David Siddhartha Patel, Brandeis University This Critical Juncture: Elite Competition in a Receding Civil War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Ammar Shamaileh, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies Citizenship Constellations in Syria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Marika Sosnowski, German Institute for Global and Area Studies Prospects for Ending External Intervention in Yemen’s War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Alexandra Stark, New America Pursuing Peace by Engaging Justice in Yemen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Stacey Philbrick Yadav, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
The Project on Middle East Political Science
The Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) is a collaborative network that aims to increase the impact of political scientists
specializing in the study of the Middle East in the public sphere and in the academic community. POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is
based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New
York and the Henry Luce Foundation. For more information, see http://www.pomeps.org.
2
Introduction
MENA’s Frozen Conflicts
Marc Lynch, Project on Middle East Political Science, George Washington University
Over the last year, the MENA region’s simmering conflicts Hermez similarly views them as “continual war, but not
have seemed frozen in place. The internationally-fueled a frozen conflict. The war continues to flow in time,
civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya have long since settled undergoing transformations and mutations.” This calls for
into an equilibrium in which no side can either truly win or careful attention to those mutations and metastasizing
truly lose. Those conflicts have been held in place in part conflict ecologies, beyond the binaries of war and peace or
by local ecologies and war economies and in part by the the false reassurance of viewing conflicts as frozen.
competitive interventions by regional and international
powers on behalf of their proxies and clients. But are What keeps these conflicts frozen is not simply military
these conflicts truly frozen? What does viewing them quagmire. Long running conflicts create new institutional
through such a lens gain, and what are the theoretical and realities which create new elites, new economies, and
analytical costs? To explore these questions, POMEPS new incentives. Frozen conflicts, then, are generative of
convened a virtual research workshop on September 29, new realities on the ground, warscapes characterized by
2020, with scholars from diverse empirical and theoretical fragmented authority, mixed governance, and deep social
backgrounds. We are delighted to now publish their transformation. Their longevity allows time for these new
papers in this issue of POMEPS STUDIES. social, political and economic realities to take deep root.
As Samer Abboud describes it, “These overlapping and
Those conflicts, frozen or otherwise, come at great cost. entangled insecurities constitute what I think of as crises
The humanitarian consequences of the wars continue to ecologies, assembling at the intersections of civil conflict,
mount. The devastation in Syria, Iraq and Yemen is too mass human displacement, proxy wars, environmental
easily reduced to nigh-incomprehensible numbers: the and epidemiological crisis, state militarization, external
hundreds of thousands of dead, the millions of refugees intervention, and economic collapse.” Such conflict
and internally displaced, the hundreds of billions of dollars ecologies, supported by regional circuits of power and
of value destroyed, the disease and famine unleashed. exchange, are far more robust than international efforts
Beyond those numbers, as Raiman al-Hamdani reminds us at conflict mediation assume. Once locked into place,
in his essay for this collection, lies a devastating landscape they generate a wide range of actors and institutions
of psychological trauma and collective memory, intangible incentivized to sustain them no matter the human costs.
human costs which will endure for generations. People
living through these frozen conflicts find themselves always The contributors to this collection document and theorize
caught in between, observes Sami Hermez, waiting on the these evolving institutional realities of governance and
next eruption of conflict even if it never arrives. conflict across a range of cases and domains. Across the
regional warscapes, Ariel Ahram argues, new forms of
The contributors to this volume agree on viewing these hybrid governance have become entrenched: “militias
conflicts as deeply entrenched, stalemated and unlikely to and warlords are steadily embedding in governance and
produce victory in any significant sense. But they disagree security provisions across wide swaths of territory. States
about whether it makes sense to conceptualize them are receding to mostly symbolic placeholders, with limited
as “frozen.” Samer Abboud argues that these conflicts practical role in governing.” The urge to recentralize
rather continue to metastasize, as what he calls “conflict authority in a post-conflict future is a quixitic one.
ecologies” constantly evolve in ways which drive deep Instead, he argues, external actors and should accept that
change beneath the seemingly frozen surface. Sami “hybrid security governance yields a pockmarked political
3
landscape, with stark variations in who bears arms in mass protests, economic crisis, and the COVID-19
different locations and under whose authority.” pandemic, citizens demanding change have been unable
to achieve a transition to a new political arrangement.”
This involves significant institutional evolution both Post-occupation Iraq, too, has proven highly resistant
within and outside the state. Marika Sosnowski traces to change despite massive failures of governance and
the mutations of hybrid governance through the issuing security, the bloody war against the Islamic State and a
of personal documents: “In the Syrian civil war, where large scale protest movement. Chantal Berman, Killian
different territorial areas have, at different times, been Clarke and Rima Majed argue that “since the end of the
outside of the control of the state, registering life-cycle post-invasion civil war, Iraq has experienced multiple
events, such as births, deaths and marriages, has become waves of mobilization – in 2011, in 2015, and in 2018 –
a necessary service other actors have had to fulfil. In all of which aired a similar constellation of demands. In
times of armed conflict, life does not pause – children this sense, the Tishreen uprising was the culmination of a
continue to be born, people die, marry and divorce – and decade of mobilization in which Iraqis denounced, with
these life events need to be documented. The gap left by increasing forcefulness, the dysfunctional political system
the state in providing life-cycle event registration during that was set up following the 2003 invasion.” While security
the civil war has been filled by a range of other actors and governance has become ever more hybrid with the
in different territorial areas.” Jerome Drevon and Peter integration and penetration of Shi’a Popular Mobilization
Haenni show governance has evolved under the control Units, the political system remains impervious to change.
of the jihadist Harakat Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib, where In Algeria, the inscrutable system of military control has
“local governance consisted of a combination of local resisted meaningful change despite the demands of the
councils, independent organisations, and armed groups’ unprecedented Hirak movement which took to the streets
infrastructures (including courts and prison facilities).” in 2019 against the re-election of a long-incapacitated
These mutations also occur inside the remaining state. president. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority
Ammar Shamaileh shows how the long war has reshaped continues to govern despite having lost its raison d’etre.
the power and influence of Syrian economic elites. “As the
intensity of the war in Syria has decreased, the intensity The contributors to this collection disagree about whether
of conflict between the Assad regime’s elites has gained international intervention, particularly by the United
momentum.” These changes are likely to endure. “Syria’s States, could unfreeze these conflicts in productive ways.
future economic landscape is unlikely to return to its pre- Intriguingly, scholars primarily focused on U.S. foreign
war order. The regime has diversified its cadre of political policy are more optimistic than are the scholars primarily
and economic beneficiaries, creating a more competitive focused on the institutional transformations of hybrid
elite landscape that has incorporated many of the elements governance. Mieczysław P. Boduszyński argues that
who organized and funded pro-regime militias throughout “Washington had the leverage and tools—and perhaps
Syria.” New political realities emerge through these easily uniquely for the Libyan case—credibility and neutrality—
missed, incremental changes taking place beneath a to help push the conflict from the level of low-intensity
seemingly frozen surface. war and de facto partition toward a permanent settlement.”
And Alexandra Stark argues that since “third party military
How long might such mutations persist? The experience intervention plays a critical role in sustaining Yemen’s
of MENA states which emerged from conflict suggests war… ending external intervention and getting regional
that they can continue for a long time. Lebanon’s political actors on board with negotiating a political solution will
system has remained impervious to change, as Sara Kayyali be a critical step in ending Yemen’s frozen conflict.” But
and Sami Hermez note: “despite experiencing some of the others view the U.S. and other outside actors as generative
most profound system shocks in the region, including… of the conflicts rather than as the source of their potential
4Introduction
resolution. Matteo Capasso argues that “war sustains jeopardize such work by hardening lines that can be more
war through securitization, border surveillance, arms fluid on the ground.” Hamdani similarly warns that “in
sales, private military companies and the creation of Yemen—whenever this war ends—the collective memory
logistics spaces.” Samer Abboud argues that “fragmented of violence will endure well into the post-conflict future.
regional visions are generative of conflict, not paralysis For Yemeni society to truly heal from the brutality there
or inertia,” as external actors intersect with local realities must be a collective mechanism for processing trauma that
in ways which create robust “regional circuits of warfare, acknowledges, rather than attempts to bury, the reality of
humanitarianism, and displacement.” And Ariel Ahram the violence as a lived experience.”
warns that interventions or mediation oriented towards
rebuilding central state authority rather than recognizing The essays in this collection point towards hybrid and
the new hybrid realities are doomed to fail. fragmented governance within robust conflict ecologies
remaining long-term features of the regional landscape.
Beyond the conflict ecologies and regional power politics, Abboud observes, “Regional crisis ecologies must thus be
several contributors urge us to consider the effects on understood as neither aberrations of an otherwise stable
individuals and communities of conflicts remaining regional order or as stalemates that remain stagnant,
frozen in these particular ways. Stacey Philbrick Yadav generational, and in need of external intervention to
thus proposes that transitional justice “might be seen resolve.” They constitute a new reality, one David Patel
as a means of unfreezing frozen conflicts like the war in describes as “a new normal.” The essays in this collection
Yemen.” She suggests that transitional justice, properly help us to understand the nature of that “new normal,”
applied, “may help to promote a cessation of hostilities what sustains these conflicts and what would need to
and break the stalemate of this frozen conflict; but unless be done to unfreeze them in a constructive rather than
peace-brokers recognize and draw more genuinely on destructive way.
some of the everyday peacebuilding done by Yemenis in
their local communities, it is unlikely to produce a more Marc Lynch, 27 October 2020
durable transformation of the conflict and could even
5Syria, Crisis Ecologies, and Enduring Insecurities in the MENA
Samer Abboud, Villanova University
If there were an archetypal subject in the MENA region and external threat opens up the space for radically
today, who would that be and who would guarantee their different security and insecurity referents. Fragmented
security? The questions of ‘who protects?’, ‘who/what is a regional visions are generative of conflict, not paralysis
threat?’, and ‘what is being protected?’ have no immediate or inertia. In other words, I do not believe that the Syrian
answers in the context of a fragmentation of securitizing conflict and regional crises are frozen in the way that, for
actors and proliferating security referents. People within example, the Cypriot conflict is frozen. The Syrian conflict
the region are subject to overlapping insecurities, from continues to metastasize precisely because of how it sits at
the slow, gradual decimation of livelihoods through the intersections of so many regional circuits that generate
climate change to the immediate upending of life by a crises rather than contribute to resolving them.
pandemic or the onset of war. These overlapping and
entangled insecurities constitute what I think of as crises Syria’s conflict ontology has been shaped by these regional
ecologies, assembling at the intersections of civil conflict, circuits of power and through compounding crises external
mass human displacement, proxy wars, environmental to the conflict itself, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the
and epidemiological crisis, state militarization, external imposition of international sanctions, climate change, and
intervention, and economic collapse. Crisis ecologies are regional economic collapse. The principle international
robust, generated by and generative of differential notions approach to reconciliation and conflict resolution in
of security and threat, promoting practices that contribute Syria has been through approaches that attempt to force
to enduring insecurities in the region. deliberation between different constellations of power
roughly organized around “opposition” or “regime” poles,
The Syrian conflict sits at the epicenter of the region’s crisis with different international and domestic actors to the
ecologies and highlights the entanglements of individual conflict represented in one pole. Attempts by the United
and regional crises. The prospects for resolving the Syrian Nations3 to facilitate peace in Syria have approached the
conflict remain contingent on the desecuritization and problem in this way, from trying to impose an agenda for
disentangling of internal and external threats that are peace and political transition (Annan), to forging great
fueled by regional circuits of power. As Rafeef Ziadeh1 power consensus (Brahimi), to building peace from the
argues, the perpetuation of conflict in the region occurs “bottom-up” (de Mistura) through ceasefires and local
through various circuits of power that connect “stable” reconciliations. These attempts have failed spectacularly,
spaces to conflict zones through, for example, overlapping not solely because they were unable to produce a way
cartographies of militarization and humanitarianism. out of crises and to force concessions from different
These circuits have become constitutive elements of the constellations of power, but because they advanced liberal
post-GWoT regional order in which violence, militarism, norms that were incapable of addressing the regional
and the suppression of political demands have become circuits and crises ecologies that shaped Syria’s conflict
core pillars of state transformation. At the regional level, ontology. Syria’s conflict ontology is illiberal, driven and
the question posed by Pinar Bilgin of “Whose Middle shaped by the authoritarian management of war and peace
East?”2 is to be secured remains relevant. For Bilgin, this that seeks a violent bifurcation of society into the loyal and
question has produced conflicting visions of what threat disloyal and the consecration of authoritarian rule through
and security mean in the region that induce securitizing new legal regimes of power and the continuation of state
actors to adopt policies that produce insecurity for others. violence against recalcitrant populations.4
The absence of a common definition of internal security
6MENA’s Frozen Conflicts
The Syrian conflict ontology thus poses two principal The norms proffered by the Astana Process do not
problems for questions of peace and reconciliation. The advance prospects for regional desecuritization but
first problem is how a regional order defined by persistent serve to strengthen regional circuits of power. This
conflict can be reoriented to facilitate desecuritization and order is emerging through a negotiated vision that seeks
reconciliation. This is not only to ask who will desecuritize the management of the Syrian battlefield through the
but how will desecuritization occurs. The second perpetuation of external influence on armed groups as the
problem is how a normative framework could emerge to core goal of deliberation. Astana thus reinforces Syria’s
facilitate such a transition away from persistent conflict authoritarian conflict ontology. The ultimate aim of the
to an untangling of crises. This is to ask how a common Astana Process is not to eliminate violence but rather to
normative structure could emerge to foster dialogue and manage it through creating battlefield conditions for the
deliberation between different securitizing actors within negotiation over who gets to exercise authority over what
the region. The United Nations approach to reconciliation territory, who can influence what actors, and what counts
in Syria was incapable of providing a sufficient response to as permissible violence. In this sense, the evolving policies
these problems or an alternative political framework for of the tripartite powers are relational and dependent on
reconciliation that could have extracted the Syrian conflict the specific conditions of the battlefield at any moment.7
from the regional circuits that fueled it. Major battlefield questions, such as policy towards the
northeastern areas under Syrian Democratic Forces
Crisis ecologies persist because of an emergent normative (SDF) control or areas in Idlib governorate dominated by
order that disincentivizes securitizing actors to engage Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), remain subject to tripartite
in deliberation, negotiation, and the desecuritization of negotiation and consensus. In this way, the tripartite
threats. In Syria we see the emergence of such an order powers have been successful in mostly transforming major
reflected at both the domestic and regional levels where armed groups into extensions of their own policies on the
illiberal norms are advanced by the Syrian regime and ground.
the tripartite Astana powers5 Russia, Turkey, and Iran,
as approaches to conflict resolution. While framing The tripartite management of the Syrian battlefield
reconciliation in terms and processes that mimic6 has paralleled efforts at imposing a post-conflict order
liberal peacebuilding, the Astana Process has actually that rejects the inclusion of former belligerents into the
sought to establish a post-conflict order that submits political process. The Syrian Constitutional Committee
Syrian sovereignty to the negotiation and consensus of (SCC), while operating under the auspices of the United
the tripartite powers. The Astana Process began as a Nations, remains ineffectual because of an effective
mechanism for Russia and Turkey to monitor battlefield veto held by the representatives of the Syrian regime
ceasefires but has since grown into a complex forum on the Committee. The Syrian Congress for National
for regional dialogue over Syria’s future in which issues Dialogue (SCND) was created out of Astana as a way to
ranging from a new Syrian constitution to joint Russia- manufacture an opposition movement that was willing
Turkish military patrols are deliberated and decided to negotiate with the Syrian regime. Similarly, proposals
upon. Since its creation in 2017, the Astana Process for parliamentary reform, presidential term limits, and
has effectively supplanted the Geneva process as the other legal reforms, have been advanced through the
mechanism for regional deliberation over how to resolve Astana process and serve to legitimate change in the name
the Syrian conflict. In this way, illiberal norms and of post-conflict reconciliation. In all of these efforts, the
conflict management strategies have come to shape Syria’s normative basis of Astana’s political processes has centered
trajectory. on excluding the Syrian opposition from post-conflict
order and concretizing regime power. The architecture
7of post-conflict order emerging from Astana forecloses are unable to live their lives inside of the country. The aim
opportunities for widespread deliberation over Syria’s of these new legal regimes is not to effect reconciliation
future. Such a vision emerging from Astana is both the but to consolidate regime power and it is complimented
outcome of waning liberal power and interveners’ inability by the politics of the Astana process. For those who fear
to shape conflict outcomes and a permissive regional or are unable to return, the prospect of life outside of Syria
environment in which illiberal norms and practices form is no less grim. Syrians displaced throughout the region
the constitutive basis of conflict management. are often subject to a range of abuses, violence, and forms
of exclusion at the hands of host states and humanitarian
Astana’s mechanism for the management of the battlefield organizations that perpetuate rather than alleviate
and major political issues in Syria has occurred while insecurity. There is simply no space for Syrians inside or
the Syrian regime has passed a series of laws aimed at outside of their country to collectively, safely, and securely
disenfranchising Syrians and ensuring the exclusion escape the regional circuits of warfare, humanitarianism,
of large segments of the population from post-conflict and displacement.
politics. The regime has envisioned a post-conflict order
in which the wartime bifurcations of Syrian society The normative order in the region today is generative of
into friends and enemies of the state (or, loyalists and political options such as Astana or the regime’s settlement
oppositionists) are consecrated as pillars of politics.8 The and reconciliation processes.9 There is no normative
exclusion of those deemed disloyal to the state is being framework for resolving the Syria conflict today that
realized through the creation of a legal architecture of seriously addresses Syria’s conflict ontology as shaped by
citizenship and personhood that denies ‘disloyal’ Syrians the region’s crisis ecologies. The liberal norms advanced in
various rights, including rights of residency, property other cases through external intervention, especially in the
ownership, bank accounts, and so on. The aim of these late 20th century, produced varying sorts of post-conflict
laws is to effectively cast out segments of the population regimes in which liberal and illiberal norms constituted
that are constituted as real or potential threats. Drawing the basis of post-conflict order. This is not to express any
on a broad definition of terrorism newly enshrined in nostalgia whatsoever for liberal hegemony, but instead to
Syrian law—one that collapses all violent and non-violent suggest that liberal norms and liberal interveners provided
acts against the state as terrorism—the Syrian regime has an alternative terrain for the negotiation of reconciliation
sought to render life in Syria impossible for hundreds of and post-conflict order. No such countervailing force exists
thousands of Syrians. These new laws leave hundreds of in the Syrian case. Liberal norms around reconciliation
thousands of displaced Syrians with very little recourse to matter mimetically10 in the Syrian case as illiberal actors
rights, redress, and repatriation. advance core goals of political transition, reconciliation,
power-sharing, and so on, but through a narrow politics of
Displaced Syrians are forced to ‘settle’ their status with exclusion. Liberal language has been appropriated towards
the government before returning to their homes. The illiberal ends.
settlement processes require Syrians to not only prove that
they have not engaged in any subversive activity against Who, then, can provide protection and security for our
the state, but to also sign a pledge never to do so. The archetypal subject introduced at the beginning of this
regime’s vision of post-conflict Syria is simply an extension essay? Or, what/who produces enduring insecurity for
of wartime order in which recalcitrant populations were our archetypal subject? Any attempt to answer these
acted on with the full violence of the state and its battlefield questions requires an impossible forensics of Syria’s
allies. The violent bifurcation of Syrian society is being conflict ontology. Such a forensics requires that we situate
extended through the law and new forms of state power the conflict within regional circuits that allow us to think
that ensure that all Syrians deemed disloyal or “terrorist” relationally about the many external interventions into
8MENA’s Frozen Conflicts
Syria’s conflict, the cascading impact of war economies, the the region today. The region’s crisis ecologies reinforce this
proliferation of armed groups, the absence of a deliberative emergent order rather than provide the possibilities for its
political process, the regional politics of humanitarian unravelling.
protection and care, the shifting priorities of regional
actors, the increasing traction of illiberal norms to solve The Syrian conflict is neither frozen nor stuck in a
conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, economic calamity, stalemate that prevents its resolution. There is no grand
the proliferation of xenophobia and anti-immigrant bargain waiting to be negotiated or an international peace
sentiment in the West, competing regional security visions process that will reorient the trajectory of the conflict
and practices, demands for ‘loyalty’ by the Syrian regime, and extract Syria from the overlapping and intersecting
and on and on. The relational patterns of domestic and crises that define the contemporary regional order.
global politics that produce insecurity for our archetypal Instead, an illiberal post-conflict order is being crafted
subject are the constitutive elements of a post-GWoT, that fuels regional crisis ecologies and contributes to the
post-uprisings regional order structured around crises perpetuation of human insecurity and regional instability.
ecologies. Individual and collective Syrian agency in this Regional crisis ecologies must thus be understood as
context is circumscribed to some extent by the conflict’s neither aberrations of an otherwise stable regional order
entanglement in these crisis ecologies. or as stalemates that remain stagnant, generational, and
in need of external intervention to resolve. The regional
The archetypal subject appears to me as one caught crisis ecologies are being produced every day, from the
within the circuits of these crisis ecologies without the Astana Process negotiations, to the movement of people
possibility for the articulation of their own narrative of throughout the region, to the continued violence being
insecurity. Who will provide vaccines when they are inflicted on populations, and through to the short- and
available? Who will ensure that the displaced have rights? long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on daily life.
How can people’s economic livelihoods be secured? The continued deepening of these crisis ecologies suggests
Individuals, armed groups, social groups, and state actors that the regional order is more dynamic than a ‘frozen
will relate to these questions differentially because of the conflict’ lens affords.
proliferation of competing security referents and actors in
Endnotes
1
Rafeef Ziadeh. 2019. Circulating Power: Humanitarian Logistics, Militarism, and the United Arab Emirates. Antipode, 51: 1684-1702.
2
Pinar Bilgin. 2015. Region, Security, Regional Security: “Whose Middle East?” Revisited. In Monier E. (eds). Regional Insecurity After the Arab
Uprisings. New Security Challenges Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 19-39.
3
Asli Bâli and Aziz Rana. 2017. The Wrong Kind of Intervention in Syria. In Makdisi, K. and V. Prashad (eds.). Land of Blue Helmets: The United
Nations and the Arab World. Oakland: University of California Press.
4
See Lewis, David, John Heathershaw, and Nick Megoran. 2018. “Illiberal peace? Authoritarian modes of conflict management.” Cooperation and
Conflict 53 (4): 486-506 and Owen, Catherine, Shairbek Juraev, David Lewis, Nick Megoran, and John Heathershaw, eds. 2017. Interrogating Illiberal
Peace in Eurasia: Critical Perspectives on Peace and Conflict. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
5
Sinem Cengiz. 2020. Assessing the Astana Peace Process for Syria: Actors, Approaches, and Differences. Contemporary Review of the Middle East,
7(2): 200-214.
6
Özker Kocadal, ‘Emerging Power Liminality in Peacebuilding: Turkey’s Mimicry of the Liberal Peace’, International Peacekeeping, 26, No. 4 (2019):
431-456.
7
Christopher Phillips. 2020. The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East. New Haven: Yale University Press.
8
Samer Abboud. 2020. Reconciling fighters, settling civilians: the making of post-conflict citizenship in Syria. Citizenship Studies 24(6): 751-768.
9
Marika Sosnowski, ‘Reconciliation agreements as strangle contracts: ramifications for property and citizenship rights in the Syrian civil war’,
Peacebuilding.
10
Özker Kocadal, ‘Emerging Power Liminality in Peacebuilding: Turkey’s Mimicry of the Liberal Peace’, International Peacekeeping, 26, No. 4 (2019):
431-456.
9Hybrid Security, Frozen Conflicts, and Peace in MENA
Ariel I. Ahram, Virginia Tech
The wars in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen—for all their similar pattern. The patrimonial logic of regime survival
devastation—have hastened regional transformations in ensured that if security services defected, they were sure
international collaborations and domestic institutions. to splinter, allowing other armed actors to step forward.
Wars in the twentieth century propelled many MENA These groups’ alignment with regimes or rebels was
states to build large standing armies and assume greater often less important than their position relative to local
control over national economies. Contemporary conflicts populations. Some were thinly-disguised mafias, others
reverse this trajectory. States do not claim, much less village or neighborhood self-defense forces. Economic
hold, a monopoly over the use of force. Instead, these gain and political postures drove patterns of alliance or
wars generate new forms of hybrid security governance.1 opposition to state authorities.3 What materialized, in
Armed non-state actors, motivated by private economic Yezid Sayigh’s words, were “novel, hybrid forms” of security
interest and linked to foreign backers, both compete and governance combining “formal and informal policing and
collude with the diminished central government. State adjudication; familiar patronage-based recruitment and
building-- facilitating national reconciliation and enabling promotion along with increasingly pervasive monetized
central governments to reassert their ambit by disarming opportunities in the gray economy; and a mix of
militias and warlords—is the conventional approach for centralized and decentralized modes of control over the
dealing with such internal disorder.2 But hybrid security means and uses of coercion.”4
thwarts this centralizing impetus. These wars are on a
trajectory toward becoming frozen conflicts. Militias Hybrid security governance yields a pockmarked political
and warlords are steadily embedding in governance and landscape, with stark variations in who bears arms in
security provisions across wide swaths of territory. States different locations and under whose authority.5 Capital
are receding to mostly symbolic placeholders, with limited cities may stay under state control, with overlapping
practical role in governing. Outside interventions for security services charged with guarding key installations
peace must accept and steer this centrifugal momentum, and preserving the state elite. Many armed groups pay
not fight it. Instead of reflexively trying to reconsolidate largely symbolic homage to distant central authorities. The
states, they must seek to negotiate a devolution whereby Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) in Iraq6 and National
non-state actors assume greater responsibilities for Defense Battalions in Syria,7 for example, operated as pro-
governance and stability. government militias under the wing of Iran. Militias are
cheap to raise and offer plausible deniability for flagrant
War, Fragmentation, and Integration in MENA abuses, but jeopardize effective central control. Some
territories became redoubts of rebel control. Boundaries
If MENA’s wars in the twentieth century were drivers of between zones of control are flexible and porous, with
state building, then the wars of the twenty-first century brokers facilitating the circulation of people and goods
are catalysts of state collapse. Iraq’s civil war of the mid- between ostensibly enemy territories. Population centers,
2000s presaged the course of later regional conflicts. The oil and mineral depots, import/export terminals, and other
disbanding of the Iraqi army left the Iraqi population at the usable spaces become focal points of competition. Less
mercy of ex-regime loyalists, Islamists, tribal chieftains, lucrative areas endure a potentially more benign neglect.8
leaders, political party operatives, organized crime Civilians tend to gravitate to whichever partisan offers a
syndicates, and anyone else capable of coercion. The wars credible commitment of personal security.9
in Yemen, Syria, and Libya began differently but followed a
10MENA’s Frozen Conflicts
The fractal nature of order in MENA is especially apparent with both the Houthis and the GoY appointing rival bank
when considering MENA’s conflicts from a peripheral directors and each issuing separate currencies. A survey
perspective. Iraqi politics is typically seen as pitting a conducted by the Yemen Polling Center (YPC) in 2019
Shi’a-dominated central government against a Sunni illustrates the consequences of these differences in popular
minority, with Kurds backing the Shi’is in return for experience of political order. Among respondents in
autonomy. But this national-level narrative elides complex Sana’a, the most significant perceived threats were Saudi
provincial and local dynamics. In Mosul, following airstrikes (27%), the continuation of the war (22%), and
defeat of the Islamic State, the PMU worked with local poverty, disease, and lack of services (20%). Respondents
Sunni Arab factions who had appealed to Baghdad to in Aden, by contrast, listed militias and armed groups as
counter Kurdish encroachment. Shi’i militias in Basra the biggest threat (26%), followed by thefts and weak state
concomitantly battled one another to capture the spoils of authorities (20%) and then poverty, disease, and lack of
the oil industry and cross-border trade, both licit and illicit. services (14%).13
“Factions within a given ethno-sectarian bloc,” Mac Skelton
and Zmakan Ali Saleem conclude, “may violently compete War pushed coercive control into smaller segments
over assets at the subnational level while colluding… at the while pulling the region into a new global hierarchy. Oil
national level.”10 revenues financed massive arms imports. Both states and
rebels have tried to use access to oil to punish rivals and
Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli entice strategic partners. These partners, though, seldom
and the eastern government, dominated by the Khalifa share the objectives of regional belligerents. For the US,
Haftar, are jealous mirrors of each other. Each has its the key concern is that radical actors will seize portions
own parliament, central bank, national oil company, of “ungoverned” territories. Outside intervention linked
and security services—all purporting to be the true MENA into a clandestine archipelago of forward operating
embodiment of the Libyan state. But their military bases, rendition hubs, and interrogation centers where
campaigns depend on tribal fighters, mercenaries, Islamist the global war on terror could be mounted. Warlords
and Salafi factions, separatists, and organized crime and militias are the crucial interlocutor in these types of
syndicates. Consequently, the battle for supremacy in the campaign, as John Allen and Giampiero Massolo observe,
Fezzan versus Sirte involves different sets of belligerents states secondary or superfluous.14 Armed drones and
and disparate agendas.11 other new technology enable outside actors to circumvent
state control and traverse international boundaries in
In Yemen, “militias—and no longer the army—are ways that mock any claim to sovereignty. The old image
currently at the center of Yemen’s hybrid military of the MENA’s strategic map, with each country shaded a
structure,” according to Eleanorea Ardemagni, Ahmed different hue indicating its geopolitical alignment within a
Nagi, and Mareike Tranfeld. Aden and the south are under global hierarchy, is anachronistic. The regional circuits of
the nominal control of the internationally recognized power, as Abboud describes, feature intersecting patron-
government of Yemen (GoY), yet subject to competition proxy ties arcing across highly differentiated space.
between various military factions, the southern separatist
movements, tribal chiefs, and radical Islamists. In Marib, Syria epitomizes such crosshatched circuitry. Syria’s
governors, tribal leaders, and officials from the central war appears at the national level as a clash between
bank voice support for the GoY, but operate autonomously. the minority-backed Assad government and the Sunni
Only the Houthi rebels, ironically, approach a monopoly majority, but looks very different at the local level. The
over force in Sana’a and the northern region, overseeing a competition in the northeast, containing the country’s
repressive security force that roots out opposition.12 As in largest oil fields and substantial agricultural lands, featured
Libya, the central bank has become a key focus of conflict, continual infighting between Sunni Arab tribes. The added
11element of Kurdish fighters added to the complexity of the under the slogan “We want a homeland!” (nurid watan),
situation. The Assad regime and the Islamic State both articulating a sense of a post-sectarian national identity
took advantage of these local rivalries to impose control while demanding responsive and transparent governance.
over the area. The US, European powers, the Gulf states, Public opinion surveys show low esteem for nearly
and Turkey initially backed the fractious mix of Sunni Arab every organ of the state. Amidst this cynicism, however,
fighting groups. Islamists forces seemed to swamp the respondents still indicated a strong attachment to state-
more secular oriented rebels. Russia and Iran, meanwhile, based identity as an abstract principle.16 Similar evidence
bolstered the Syrian government, which held on to comes from YPC polling. Nearly half (46%) opined that
Damascus and the coastal strip. Iran dispatched Lebanese in general the Yemeni state alone should handle security
Hezbollah, the Iraqi PMU, and other Shi’is militias from provision and very few had positive opinions of militias.
as far away as Afghanistan. Intense military pressure, Again, this confidence in the state was more abstract than
competing sponsors, and incessant infighting splintered real. Only 36 percent wanted the state as sole security
the opposition. The US shifted its attention to the Kurdish provider in their specific region.
Democratic Union Party (PYD), which had previously
aligned with Damascus and controlled self-proclaimed The rebels themselves further affirm statehood’s normative
autonomous cantons in Hasakah. Turkey picked up the gravity. Pro-government militias bolster their own
remnants of the Sunni Arab opposition, turning them legitimacy by claiming the mantle of the state. Rebels labor
against the PYD while propping up the last Islamist to duplicate the extensive bureaucracies they had grown
holdout. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are moving tentatively up under, issuing birth certificates, irrigation licenses,
to rapprochement with Assad, even as they search for and other documentation, collecting taxes, running
other levers to counter Iran. schools, and providing security as Drevon and Haenni and
Sosnowski highlight. The more ambitious and disciplined,
Libya’s war transposes these circuits. The Russian private as discussed above, go so far as to establish alternative
military contractors that bolster Haftar’s forces had fought fiscal institutions. Even the Islamic State exhibited
previously in Ukraine and Syria. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, remarkably state-like features at its zenith.17 If statehood
and the UAE provide money, weapons, and air support to did not exist in MENA, it would have to be invented.
Haftar. France supported Haftar’s campaign in the Fezzan
in order to protect French assets in the Sahel. The GNA, But such idealized, even heroic, states are unlikely to arrive.
in response, relies on the United Nations to maintain its Temporary ceasefires and tacit truces, as Stark notes here,
status as the sole recognized government and depends have not staunched the hemorrhage of state power in
militarily on Turkey. Ankara’s recently-dispatched Yemen or in Libya. The periodic pauses embolden armed
expeditionary force included several thousand Syrian non-state actors even further. Syria and Iraq struggle
rebels, many enticed by the promise of better wages. to reestablish administrative and security presence as
they embarked on reconstruction while still mopping
Yet even where states seem functionally moribund, up areas of rebel rule. Despite proclamations about
statehood as a general model retains moral weight. national unity and consolidation, schemes to reallocate
Lebanese citizens use ethno-sectarian identification abandoned properties and privatize states assets aim to
instrumentally to access welfare institutions and appease erstwhile militia allies and further embed hybrid
ensure personal security through sectarian militias like security governance into the social fabric.18 Rebels may be
Hezbollah. Yet public opinion surveys show that they still defeated, but states are far from reasserting their monopoly
overwhelmingly identify themselves as Lebanese. It is over violence. Violence abates, but conflicts remain as
the state, not the sect, to which they most readily refer.15 belligerents get steadily frozen into place.
Similarly, mass protests in Iraq in 2019-20 mobilized
12MENA’s Frozen Conflicts
Toward a Frozen Hybrid Peace? spoilers, but partners in a host of local settings and a range
of governance domains. It is the sidelined and exhausted
Frozen conflicts often appear as uncomfortable purgatory state that is most liable to be obstructionist and renege on
between full-on hostilities and substantial conflict its commitment to retreat. Political initiatives must work
resolution. Even when fighting has ceased, William top-down and bottom-up at once, engaging the fragile
Zartman writes, “Frozen conflicts do not naturally state, peripheral non-state actors and foreign interveners
sublimate into the air, but can explode with deep concurrently.24 No actor will be singularly determinative
violence.”19 Conventional policy prescriptions derive in setting policy. Stalemates and grand bargains are more
from liberal ontologies that posit responsible and capable likely than victories. Hybrid security order succeeds by
states as essential to a livable order. The aim, accordingly, freezing belligerents in place, entrenching them in slivers
is to gradually revive state power and reestablish national of territory beyond the practical reach of the state but still
cohesion.20 under its symbolic umbrella. Continued self-rule in places
like Marib, the Green Mountains in Libya, or Hasakah
But the MENA’s interlinking crises are now so protracted in Syria, are objectives, not drawbacks. Transforming
and hybrid security governance so entrenched that it bastions of self-defense into island of relative prosperity
is worth looking beyond this orthodoxy.21 Intervening and peace could set a salutary example to others.25 The
powers already engaging non-state actors, especially after aim is to find a co-constitutive mode where non-state
efforts to work through enfeebled states prove remiss. In actors assume more responsibility for governance from the
these routine improvisations, warlords are bribed to deliver state.
humanitarian aid and militias recruited to patrol sensitive
areas. Yet these measures are still framed as intermediate Hybrid security imposes significant ceiling on human
steps in the belated transition to a centralized, competent flourishing. But MENA states, even at their best,
statehood. If states are unable to provide security directly, were seldom up to the task of delivering meaningful
they should at least arbitrate and select who does.22 But representation or socio-economic inclusion.26 Moreover,
these efforts are often fruitless, even farcical. Armed the supposition that areas lost to state control are
actors may take salaries and uniforms from the state, but necessarily lawless and chaotic has proven badly
the closer the central government gets to curbing their unfounded. Indeed, innovation, improvisation, and
power, the more obstreperous they are likely to become.23 linkages to global capital, ideas, and people continue,
The sheer spatial dispersion of power in hybrid security albeit unconventionally.27 Some envision hybrid security
governance ensures that multiple actors are able to stand as portending rough and ready balances of power. But the
in the state’s way. fragility of hybrid security governance and the collective
memory of devastating wars, the kind of stillness that
The challenge of managing hybrid security in MENA Hermez describes, can also instill forbearance.28 It is this
is not to privilege states and prepare them for eventual awareness, now painfully imprinted across the region,
supremacy but to negotiate the immediate devolution of which offers the best hopes for freezing conflicts as a way
functional responsibilities. Armed non-state actors are not toward peace.
13Endnotes
1
Bagayoko, Niagale, Eboe Hutchful, and Robin Luckham. “Hybrid security governance in Africa: rethinking the foundations of security, justice and
legitimate public authority.” Conflict, Security & Development 16, no. 1 (2016): 1-32.
2
See, for example, Chesterman, Simon. You, the People: the United Nations, Transitional administration, and state-building (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005); Fjelde, Hanne, and Kristine Höglund, eds. Building Peace, Creating Conflict?: Conflictual Dimensions of Local and
International Peace-building. Nordic Academic Press, 2011.
3
Ariel I. Ahram, War and Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (New York: Polity, 2020), 139-140.
4
Yezid Sayigh, The Dilemmas of Reform: Policing in Arab Transition, Carnegie Middle East Center, March 2016, https://carnegieendowment.org/
files/CEIP_CMEC61_Sayigh_Final.pdf; See also Thanassis Cambanis et al., Hybrid Actors: Armed Groups and state Fragmentation in the Middle East
(New York: Century Foundation, 2019).
5
Nelson Kasfir, Georg Frerks & Niels Terpstra, “Introduction: Armed Groups and Multi-layered Governance,” Civil Wars, 19:3 (2017) 257-278;
Hameiri, Shahar, and Lee Jones. “Beyond hybridity to the politics of scale: International intervention and ‘local’ politics.” Development and
Change 48, no. 1 (2017): 54-77.
6
Mansour, Renad, and Fāliḥ ʻAbd al-Jabbār. The Popular Mobilization Forces and Iraq’s Future. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 2017, https://carnegie-mec.org/2017/04/28/popular-mobilization-forces-and-iraq-s-future-pub-68810.
7
Üngör, Uğur Ümit. “Shabbiha: Paramilitary Groups, Mass Violence and Social Polarization in Homs.” Violence: An International Journal 1, no. 1
(2020): 59–79; Leenders, Reinoud, and Antonio Giustozzi. “Outsourcing state violence: The National Defence Force, ‘stateness’ and regime resilience
in the Syrian war.” Mediterranean Politics 24, no. 2 (2019): 157-180.
8
Tim Eaton, et al. Conflict Economies in the Middle East and North Africa, Chatham House Report, 2019, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/
default/files/2019-08-13-ConflictEconomies.pdf
9
Schon, Justin. “Motivation and opportunity for conflict-induced migration: An analysis of Syrian migration timing.” Journal of Peace Research 56.1
(2019): 12-27.
10
Mac Skelton and Zmakan Ali Saleem, Iraq’s Political Marketplace at the Subnational Level: The Struggle for Power in Three Provinces. London
School of Economics, Conflict Research Programme, 2020, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105184/, p. 3.
11
Wehrey, Fred. “Libya After Qadhafi: Fragmentation, Hybridity, and Informality.” In Fragile Politics: Weak States in the Greater Middle East (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
12
Eleonaora Ardemagni, Ahmed Nagi, and Mereike Transfed, “Shuyyukh, Policemen and Supervisers: Yemen’s Competing Security Provides,” ISPI and
the Carnegie Middle East Center, March 2020.
13
Yemen Polling Center, Perceptions of the Yemeni Public on Living Conditions and Security Related Issues (August 2019), https://yemenpolling.org/
Projects-en/ICSP_Survey_2019_Preliminary_findings_26_01_2020.pdf
14
John Allen and Giampiero Massolo, “Preface,” in The Rise and Future of Militias in the MENA Region, eds. Ranj Alaaldin, Federica Saini Fasanoti,
Artuor Varvelli, and Tarik Yousef, ISPI and the Brookings Doha Center, 2019, p. 9.
15
Moaddel, Mansoor, Jean Kors, and Johan Gärde. “Sectarianism and counter-sectarianism in Lebanon.” University of Michigan Population Studies
Center Report No. 12-757, May 2012, https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1425497/FULLTEXT01.pdf ; Cammett, Melani. “Sectarianism
and the Ambiguities of Welfare in Lebanon.” Current Anthropology 56.S11 (2015): S76-S87.
16
International Republican Institute, Nurid Watan: We Want a Homeland! Basrawi Perspecives on the 2019 Protests in Basra Province, January 2020,
https://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/basra-3.pdf; Munqith Dagher, Iraq 16 years later, April 2019, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/
s3fs-public/event/190408_Final_IIACSS-CSIS.pdf; Fanar Haddad, “The Waning Relevance of the Sunni-Shia Divide” The Century Foundation, April
10, 2019, https://tcf.org/content/report/waning-relevance-sunni-shia-divide/
17
Ahram, Ariel I. Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Reshaping of the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 185-198.
18
Heydemann, Steven. “Civil War, Economic Governance & State Reconstruction in the Arab Middle East.” Dædalus 147.1 (2018): 48-63.
19
William Zartman, Preventing Identity Conflicts Leading to Genocide and Mass Killings, New York: International Peace Institute, November 2010, p.
23, https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/ipi_identity_conflicts_epub.pdf. See also Grigas, Agnia, Frozen Conflicts: A Tool Kit for
Us Policymakers. Atlantic Council, June 27, 2016, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/frozen-conflicts-a-tool-kit-for-
us-policymakers/
20
Ghani, Ashraf, and Clare Lockhart. Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
21
Sedra, Mark. “Finding Innovation in State-building: Moving Beyond the Orthodox Liberal Model.” PRISM 3, no. 3 (2012): 47-62.
22
Lawrence, Michael. “Towards a Non-State Security Sector Reform Strategy.” CIGI SSR Issue Paper No. 8 (2012), https://www.cigionline.org/
publications/towards-non-state-security-sector-reform-strategy
23
Simone Tholens, “Border management in an era of ‘statebuilding lite’: security assistance and Lebanon’s hybrid sovereignty,” International Affairs,
93:4 (2017): 865–882; Malejacq, Romain. Warlord Survival: The Delusion of State Building in Afghanistan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2020).
24
Mac Ginty, Roger, and Oliver Richmond. “The fallacy of constructing hybrid political orders: a reappraisal of the hybrid turn in
peacebuilding.” International Peacekeeping 23.2 (2016): 219-239; Richmond, Oliver “The Dilemmas of a Hybrid Peace: Negative or
Positive?” Cooperation and Conflict 50, no. 1 (March 2015): 50–68.
25
Autesserre, Severine, Peaceland: Conflict resolution and the everyday politics of international intervention (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2014).
26
Anderson, Lisa. “The State and its Competitors.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 50, no. 2 (2018): 317-322.
27
Nordstrom, Carolyn. Global outlaws: crime, money, and power in the contemporary world (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Risse,
Thomas, ed. Governance without a state?: policies and politics in areas of limited statehood (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
28
See Hermez in this volume. See also Phillips, Sarah G. “Proximities of Violence: Civil Order Beyond Governance Institutions.” International Studies
Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2019): 680-691; Akar, Hiba Bou. For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press,
2018).
14You can also read
